well, republicans maintained their majority in the u.s. house. you know, we won too. >> narrator: the meeting to avert the fiscal cliff quickly soured. >> this helped cement boehner's impression that he was dealing with an arrogant president that was not really wanting to negotiate. and this sort of light begins to dawn on boehner that he has resolute opponents on both fronts of his two-front battle. on one side of him, he has the house conservatives. on the other, he has president obama. he's in the middle and neither side seems to be cutting him a lot of slack. >> narrator: finally, boehner concluded that the negotiations to reach a grand bargain with the white house were going nowhere. >> when i gave the presiy bottom line, it was my bottom line. and the white house response was, "well, we don't think we're going to get anywhere. it's a waste of time." at that point i had no choice but to go to some other plan. >> narrator: the president's team doesn't remember it that way. >> we were disappointed, but we were also puzzled that, once again, we